← Jonathan Landaw

Buddhism for Dummies (29 August 2008)

Jonathan Landaw · 29 August 2008 · 1 h 55 min · Tse Chen Ling via Internet Archive

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  • 16:45

    The overall pattern that I was following, the template, as it were, was the lamrim. And now that term is probably familiar to a number of people here, but maybe unfamiliar also. That term lamrim, how many people is that totally unfamiliar? You haven't heard that before, lamrim. And how many people have heard that? Know what it means? Okay. So you who raised your hands, explain to those who didn't.

  • 19:15

    Now bodhicitta, what is bodhicitta? The mind that wishes to attain enlightenment in order to benefit living beings. Exactly. So it is the spirit. It's the spirit behind the great vehicle Buddhism. whose main goal is not simply to achieve one's own liberation from suffering but to achieve a state in which we can help others along the path to their liberation from suffering.

  • 34:07

    That the destruction that had happened in Tibet under King Lang Dharma, a far greater destruction happened in India itself. Like in the year, the historians say 1199, so one year before 1200, the Nalanda University, which was the focus of these monastic traditions, was destroyed, totally destroyed. And from that time onwards, Buddhism... was ceased to be practiced as a major spiritual tradition in India. Hinduism survived for many, many different reasons, but Buddhism, which was very monastic in its character with the destruction of the monasteries, we could say went underground.

  • 1:00:57

    six years, I was tuning my strings much too tightly, know, with these strict ascetic practices. If I'm ever going to follow a path that leads to liberation from suffering, I'm going to have to follow a middle path, avoiding the extremes of self-indulgence on one hand self-denial or asceticism on And that's interesting because that phrase, following a middle path, that actually became the name for Buddhist teachings, was the middle path. In his lifetime, and I think probably for a long time afterwards, no one ever said that he's teaching Buddhism. I think that term or the equivalent, the Asian equivalent of those terms, probably didn't come into existence until quite a bit later.

  • 1:27:52

    So the way he answered those taunts was not verbally, but by, his hands had been in his lap in meditation, but by stretching out his right hand and touching the ground. Beyond his right knee, he was actually calling on the earth as his witness, meaning that he hadn't started the spiritual path just 35 years ago. He had actually been on the spiritual path for a lifetime after a lifetime after a lifetime, sometimes as an animal, sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a man, all these different life forms that he had taken.

0:04 Yeah. I haven't said anything. So if you hear it, Report an error

0:15 then your psychic abilities are a-okay. Report an error

0:21 So good evening, everybody. We're kind of a small, intimate group, so I have a feeling that it might be best, instead of me just talking at you, that I entertain your questions, your interests, or your discussion. So if you if hear it, Report an error

0:41 Usually a question and answer session takes place after a talk has already been given. But I have a feeling that maybe people have come here already with some questions, either from having read the particular book from which this course got its title or just from your general interest in Buddhism. So if that's the case, are there any questions? Report an error

1:07 that you have? Any particular areas of interest? Report an error

1:13 Something you'd like to hear go on a rave about? Report an error

1:31 can repeat it too. Do you come from a Buddhist tradition or are you not Buddhist? are you yes i now i i am buddhist The vast majority of the teachings that I've received are in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the same tradition as Tse Chin Ling. But I have received, especially in the earlier days of my training, I received teachings in the Theravadan tradition and in the Zen tradition, but that really counts for just a very small percentage of the teachings that I received. Report an error

2:19 Most of the teachings... A very, very high percentage of the teachings I received were from teachers such as Geshe Ngawan Darge, who taught at the Tibetan library in Dharamsala, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, who were the founders of Tse Chen Ling, and, of course, many times teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Report an error

2:42 And then there were other teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions I studied with as well, but the Dalai Lama and the three lamas that I just mentioned are my main teachers. Report an error

3:02 such a vast array of events. Report an error

3:09 Since there's such an extensive array of information about Buddhism, how did you go about selecting what you would put in the book? Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that. So the question has to do with how the book Buddhism for Dummies was put together, how the selection was made. Report an error

3:33 That's actually a very interesting and not that easy question to answer, but I'll try my best. First I should say, when I was told that the name of this particular weekend was going to be Buddhism for Dummies, it made me wonder, well, who's going to come? Do you have to take a test and then those people who fail the test will be allowed to come? And those people who pass it will have to go upstairs to Emily's teachings? Report an error

4:03 And when the book first came out, when Buddhism for Dummies first came out, there was a number of people, quite a number, I was surprised how many, who said what an insulting title that you chose for the book. Report an error

4:14 That's a very un-Buddhist title, Buddhism for Dummies. And it really surprised me because first of all, as probably everyone here knows, you don't make up that title. It's a series. It's the Dummies series. It's been in existence for, it was in existence for a long time before. know Report an error

4:32 Buddhism for Dummies was ever written. You know how the dummy series started? You aware of that? No? Maybe I should mention it because this will also help a little bit. Report an error

4:45 When people first started having personal computers, the manual that went along with those personal computers was like a telephone book and it was meant to tell you how to use the computer but the only people who could understand the manual were people who already knew how to use computers. Report an error

5:06 language. a need was perceived for someone to write a computer manual for dummies. In other words, for people who are not already computer literate, but who have a PC and want to know how to use it. So that's how the dummies series started. And all the early titles were things like DOS for dummies, WordPerfect for dummies. Report an error

5:28 Even things that don't even exist anymore. Word for dummies. And then eventually moving to things like internet for dummies and so forth. So all of the early books were in this technical vein. And the style of it was like a patient teacher joking you through the difficulties. In other words... Through all these manuals, they not only simplified things very, very much, but they also kind of encouraged you, don't worry if this is difficult, it'll become easy, and here's a joke, here's a corny joke to make it through this next chapter. Report an error

6:07 It was kind of like a very folksy kind of feeling. So that series proved very, very popular, very, very effective. And so at some point, I'm not exactly sure when, they decided to branch out into fields beyond. So the title existed before the book was written. It was a title to be written. Report an error

6:51 The reason I got chosen for it was because someone had previously been chosen for the job. I think it was actually a Tibetan fellow. I don't know his name. He had the manuscript for a while, some months or a year, and at the end of it decided that it wasn't really going to work out. So they were looking for a writer to replace him with. At that time, it was about 2001, Some of you may remember His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave teachings at the Shoreline Amphitheater. Were any of you there? Yeah. And a brochure, not a brochure, what do you call it? Report an error

7:36 The booklet that's handed out to everybody who comes to those teachings. It had a series of essays in the middle and the subject of the Dalai Lama's teachings was basically emptiness, the wisdom of emptiness. Report an error

7:52 So there were, I believe, four essays in the middle of the book. And it just so happened that the essay that I wrote, which was actually just a recasting of a letter that I'd written to the father of a friend of mine some years before that, who asked, well, what's emptiness? What's that all about? So I wrote him a very brief letter. And in the audience over that weekend... Report an error

8:19 was the woman who was the literary agent for the Dummies series, who was given the task to find an author for Buddhism for Dummies. And when she read the essay, she thought, oh, this is clear. This is kind of easy. It's clear. It's not threatening. So maybe he would write Buddhism for Dummies. Report an error

8:40 So she found out where I lived and gave me a call, and then that's how I was commissioned to write the book. When I started, I had, as part of what I was doing, I had a dummies editor. And one of her main jobs was to suggest ways in which the book could fit into the tone of the other dummies books. And a lot of that has to do with adding corny jokes every so often or patting the reader on the back and saying, it's not so hard, you'll understand this. Report an error

9:20 Which is not my own style but there was an editor who was good at doing that and after a while I kind of picked up on it a little bit so in some cases I was able to contribute to that even though that's not my preferred way of writing. Report an error

9:38 And then what happened and this is now getting a little bit closer to the answer to your question was the initial drafts that I wrote because my background was in Tibetan Buddhism, largely, had a very strong flavor of Tibetan Buddhism and that's not really what the publisher wanted. He didn't want Tibetan Buddhism for dummies. He wanted Buddhism for dummies. And I had thought that I was being, if I can use the term, rather Catholic in my approach. Report an error

10:14 I thought I was casting the net quite widely. But when some other people read the manuscript, they said, no, it's still much more slanted in the direction of Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error

10:28 So there was someone who a few years previous to that had written Meditation for Dummies. His name was Stephen Bodian. And at that time he was living in Hawaii. And so he was contacted and asked if he would come aboard as a co-author. The manuscript had already been written. 80-90 % written so that he could come and he could suggest ways of fleshing it out so that other traditions which hadn't been so well represented could be more represented or that viewpoints which had not been as fully expressed could be more fully expressed. Report an error

11:07 So we worked together. I've never met him. To this day I've not met him. But we worked together by email and sometimes by telephone calls. For the next several months. And he's very good. He had been the editor of the Yoga Journal at one point. So he had a very good eye for editing himself. And he looked at what I had done and identified the areas where it was deficient and suggested ways to fill up those gaps. Report an error

11:39 And in some cases, he himself filled up the gaps. He wrote the pieces. that Fleshed out those chapters, those specific chapters. Or in other cases, he suggested to me what I might research to fill that out. So eventually the book became written as this kind of collaboration. But it wasn't a collaboration from the beginning. It was more like a collaboration three quarters of the way through, you could say. And I think the hardest job in writing the book was... Report an error

12:18 For me, I believe there are chapters 3 and 4 or 4 and 5, I don't quite remember, the historical chapters. Because there the idea was to have one chapter to describe how Buddhism grew up and evolved while it was still in India, while it was still an Indian spiritual tradition. And then the next chapter, how it evolved as it moved out of India to the other countries in Asia and eventually made its way to the West. Report an error

12:48 And so that was where I was really stepping outside my comfort zone. First of all, my interest in Buddhism was never specifically historical. My interest in Buddhism, my own personal interest was always very psychological. That's what interested me. That's what excited me about Buddhism. That's where I thought it had its greatest contribution to make. And so historical questions never Report an error

13:18 Never were primary importance to me, though over the years I picked up quite a bit of history. But that perspective was not my strong point, and certainly not when it moved out of India and out of Tibet and into countries like Southeast Asia's countries, Thailand and Burma, Sri Lanka, and far eastern countries such as... Report an error

13:46 China, Korea, Japan. So I had to do a lot of research in that area and tried to boil down all the stuff that I had read into a few relatively clear pages that wasn't too terribly oversimplifying what is actually quite a complex history. I mean, even if you compare, for example... If you wanted to give a brief dummies history of the evolution of Christianity, then you'd have to give an account of the early days. Report an error

14:21 You'd have to talk about the schism between the East and the West, the Orthodox and the Roman. You'd have to talk about the Reformation. You'd have to talk about the proliferation of Protestant sects and so forth. Even for a Westerner from a Western tradition, that's a lot of complex history to put into. Report an error

14:41 I got steered on to some good books. And I think I was able to pull together a fairly fair and balanced account, trying not to disparage any tradition and try to speak about it as much as possible as they would themselves. And in some cases that was difficult because there were certain trends in Buddhist history which were considered at the time that they were involved. Report an error

15:40 At the time that they evolved were considered quite suspect by other Buddhist schools and so a lot of the material written about them described the founders or the early days of that school in less than flattering terms and that was part of the historical record and I didn't want to exclude such things because that wouldn't be honest to the history. Report an error

16:07 I think I did a fair job on that one. But the overall... decision of what to put in the book and the approach and so forth, excluding Stephen Bodian's contributions, which shaped the final project. The overall pattern that I was following, the template, as it were, was the lamrim. And now that term is probably familiar to a number of people here, but maybe unfamiliar also. Report an error

17:00 That term lamrim, how many people is that totally unfamiliar? You haven't heard that before, lamrim. And how many people have heard that? Know what it means? Okay. So you who raised your hands, explain to those who didn't. Report an error

17:16 No. Lamrim. Okay, let me reverse the field for a second. What does lamrim mean, those who know? Stages of the path, exactly. I'm not a student of language, but some terms I've picked up over the years. And lam means path and rim means stages or graded. And what is, in a nutshell, what is the evolution of the lamrim? Report an error

17:47 Like who wrote it, where did it come from, what does it do? Does anyone know? Atisha, yes. A thousand years ago there lived in India an extraordinary person named Atisha. Report an error

18:04 And he grew up in what we recognize now as Bengal. And during his life he studied with no less than 157 different gurus. It was quite extraordinary because like a contemporary of his, Milarepa, studied with two gurus his entire life. Atisha studied with 157. And what that basically meant was that he took... Report an error

18:33 All of the living traditions, the lineages that he was able to find, and he not only studied them, but he incorporated them in his own being. And especially, there was one guru that he traveled over a year to meet. Modern scholarship says that it was in Sumatra in Indonesia where he found this guru. It was a very long, very difficult journey to get there. Report an error

19:02 And then when he got there, he studied with this master for 12 years. And from him, he received basically the lineages of the exchange of self and other technique for cultivating bodhicitta. Now bodhicitta, what is bodhicitta? The Report an error

19:28 mind that wishes to attain enlightenment in order to benefit living beings. Exactly. So it is the spirit. It's the spirit behind the great vehicle Buddhism. whose main goal is not simply to achieve one's own liberation from suffering but to achieve a state in which we can help others along the path to their liberation from suffering. Report an error

19:55 So this motivation is the heart of great vehicle Buddhism, the heart of the Mahāyāna. It's the compassionate intention to benefit others. the hero of Report an error

20:17 to enlightenment, Buddhist saint, we could say, is the Bodhisattva, the someone who's filled with such extraordinary compassion for others that he or she dedicates their entire energy to achieving enlightenment. And so Atisha... He received many, many teachings on the cultivation of bodhicitta, but he always felt that this special teacher, who the Tibetans refer to as Sir Lingpa, the man from the Golden Isles, Sir Lingpa was his special guru for cultivating this compassionate bodhicitta motivation. Report an error

20:59 And so after spending 12 years in Sumatra, he made it back to India, and he spent most of the rest of his life... a northern Indian There were three large monastic universities in northern India from which the Mahāyāna and its later evolution, the Vajrayana, the diamond vehicle, that's where they evolved and where it was taught. Report an error

21:25 And that's where he was living. And coincidental to all of that was what was happening in Tibet. Now, in Tibet... A few hundred years previously, Buddhism had made its way into that country largely through the agency of the great Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, who was able to quell forces inimicable to the spread of Dharma, helped found monasteries, established the tradition which became known as the Nyingma tradition, which still exists. Report an error

21:58 But what had happened was that that Buddhism that he had introduced had suffered a tremendous... word can I use for it? Tremendous destruction the hands of a king known as Lang Dharma, in the space of a few years And many, many other... Central Tibet and broke many, The lineage, for example, of the ordination of the Leordine nuns was so decimated by his actions that it didn't recover for a thousand years, and many, many other. Report an error

22:36 Acts of destruction were caused and when finally he was overthrown and another religious king came to the throne, one of his main purposes was to invite someone from India to come to Tibet to revitalize the weakened institution of Buddhism in his own country. And because Atisha was kind of the jewel of North Indian... Report an error

23:07 Buddhist masters, he was the one who was invited. And there's a very whole, very moving story of Atisha's life and what happened, how he was invited to Tibet, how he made his way there. I won't go into any of those details. But when he finally received permission from his abbot to leave India and go to Tibet, the abbot made him promise and made the Tibetans who were accompanying him promise that after three years he'd return. Report an error

23:37 Because he felt that if someone like Atisha were to leave India, that Buddhism in India would suffer a tremendous decline. And so Atisha promised and his Tibetan entourage promised that he would come back in three years. So he spent three years in Tibet and then he was going to honor his promise and he was making his way back towards... Report an error

24:07 India from Tibet but as he reached the area of approximately the Nepali border a war had broken out and it was impossible for a whole group of people to make it through at that time the best that they could do was to somehow get a copy of the main teaching that that Atisha had been giving in Tibet up to that time a book that he had written The Lamp for the Path the lamp for the path is considered The prototype of the lamrim literature, the stages of the path literature, and what it does, it takes all of the whole range of the Buddhist teachings and it structures them in the order of how a person who's undergoing the training would practice from the beginning when they first show an interest in following the spiritual path all the way through the various stages, various meditations. Report an error

25:05 To the attainment of enlightenment at the end. Now, this, so within the lamrim, there are no new teachings. Everything goes back to the teachings of Buddha himself. But it differs from the teachings of Buddhism, of Buddha in one respect. And that was that Buddha taught in a, how could we say it, in a occasional manner. Report an error

25:34 meaning Whoever requested his teachings, whoever he was speaking to, he would speak to whatever their needs were at that moment, their level of aptitude, their interest, where they were on the path, and he would address that. And eventually all those teachings were put together and the canon of Buddha's own words runs to over a hundred volumes of texts because they have his teachings for... Report an error

26:05 45 years of teaching, so it's a huge amount of material. So let's say that you, and not all of that has been translated into English, but a lot of it has. Report an error

26:18 And it exists in other languages, in Tibetan and Pāli, Sanskrit and so forth, Chinese. So let's say you had a library of the works of Buddha and you wanted to study, you were really interested in Buddhism. Report an error

26:35 It would be quite overwhelming. First of all, the sheer volume is daunting. But even if you were to just decide that you're going to make your way through these volumes, it's very uncertain whether the particular volume that you pick up would really be addressed to where you are at that given moment. Report an error

27:00 It could be addressed to people who are at a different stage of spiritual development. There would probably be something in it that you'd find valuable but it wouldn't be particularly tailored to where you were at that moment. So what Atisha did was he took all of these teachings, put it in a graded order so anyone who was interested in evolving spiritually could follow the teachings from A through to Z as it were. Report an error

27:32 So that's why it's the graded path. It's put in this ordered path. Now, this wasn't just Atisha's invention. There had been volumes from other Indian masters who had attempted the same kind of thing. But Atisha's text, The Lamp for the Path, became the prototype of this. And when I was studying in India, I went over last week in 1970, when I first went to India, and I spent... Report an error

28:04 Most of the 1970s in India. Report an error

28:10 During that period of time, the lamrim was the basis of the education that I was receiving. Either I was studying the lamrim itself, which I received teachings on many, many times, and so happened that I went over there to join a friend of mine who was writing his doctoral thesis on the lamrim. And I joined his class. Report an error

28:06 India. Report an error

28:34 And I prepared for it by typing up his notes and so forth. And so I was either writing, editing, receiving the lamrim many, many, many times over those years. And I found it to be extremely helpful in that once I got familiar with the overall pattern of the lamrim, then after that, any Buddhist teaching I'd receive. Report an error

29:01 Even if it was not from the Tibetan tradition, if it was, let's say, from the Theravadan tradition or the Zen tradition, even teachings outside this field of Buddhism suddenly made more sense with the lamrim as the basic framework in which to understand it. The lamrim is put together in terms of a graded order of motivations, what actually impels us in this life, from the very worldly motivation all the way through the various levels of spiritual. Report an error

29:31 And so I always found the lamrim to be the most clearly organized way of approaching spiritual teachings in general and of course Buddhist teachings in particular. So it was with the lamrim in mind that I tried to organize my chapters in the early table of contents and so forth. And then would flesh it out with other things. Either I myself would flesh it out or... Report an error

30:03 Stephen Bodian would suggest, for example, one chapter that I didn't think to write is what does a typical Buddhist do? Okay, you're a Buddhist, so you're studying Buddhism, so what does a Buddhist person do? Does he go to church on Sunday? What kind of things does that happen? They do. And that wasn't something that had an abiding interest. Report an error

30:32 And I think someone who... long answer to a good question. if I were to give a short answer, basic yardstick I used was the Lamrim. Report an error

30:59 I think someone who... Knows the lamrim and reads Buddhism for Dummies. We'll see that in there. But it's not, because of the way the book evolved, I think it's more hidden now than it was in the earlier stages. I Report an error

31:20 hope that long answer didn't scare anyone else from asking questions. But it was a big question. Report an error

31:32 This is just sort of a nitpicky question of curiosity. The man who wrote the lamrim. I'm sorry, I don't remember his name. Atisha. Atisha? Yeah. You said that he studied with 157 gurus. That's the number I was told, yes. And I'm always curious when I hear gurus what their tradition was or where they were coming from. Report an error

31:58 And so was he studying from many different traditions outside of Buddhism or within Buddhism? As I understand it, the teachers that... The vast majority of them were masters of the traditions that had grown up and were still being practiced in India itself at that time and specifically in these North Indian monastic universities. Report an error

32:36 Some of you who have... I believe Atisha had connection with all. All three of them, I'm quite sure he did. So there was a whole style of teaching and practice that evolved and was perpetuated at these institutions. And then, of course, then he also traveled to Sumatra where he stayed for a very long time receiving the lineages from that teacher which had also grown up in India but he had taken them to Sumatra. Report an error

33:35 to what modern-day Indonesia. So, yeah, it was the Indian Buddhist tradition. And just a note of history that's interesting. All of this was happening around the year 1000. Tisha was born a little before the end of 900s and then he lived into the 1000s. So that's when all of that was happening, about a thousand years ago. And it wasn't long after that. Report an error

34:07 That the destruction that had happened in Tibet under King Lang Dharma, a far greater destruction happened in India itself. Like in the year, the historians say 1199, so one year before 1200, the Nalanda University, which was the focus of these monastic traditions, was destroyed, totally destroyed. And from that time onwards, Buddhism... Report an error

34:36 was ceased to be practiced as a major spiritual tradition in India. Hinduism survived for many, many different reasons, but Buddhism, which was very monastic in its character with the destruction of the monasteries, we could say went underground. It wasn't as if it totally disappeared, but as a recognizable separate spiritual force, it ceased to exist. Report an error

35:05 So what had happened was that in the meantime, it had been transplanted. Just at the time that it was being destroyed in India, it was being transplanted into Tibet. So the Tibetans, they actually consider themselves heir to the Indian tradition. And then it stayed kind of on ice for several centuries, right? Report an error

35:29 Because Tibet is a very, very hard place to reach. And so it was on the other side of the Himalayans. Indian Buddhism now with a Tibetan flavor was preserved. Now there was very strong contact between places like China and Tibet. In fact, for a period of time, the Tibetans were the lamas or the gurus of the Chinese emperors. And they had that guru-disciple relationship going. Report an error

35:55 But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Tibet was really a hidden kingdom. And so it was only with... Report an error

36:09 communist Chinese, that the tradition poured out of the Himalayas and first and foremost back into India itself. And at that time, I know many, many of the lamas felt that they were returning to the mother country, not because there's a racial connection between the Indians and the Tibetans, because there really isn't, but because they consider India their mother country because it was from India that they received Buddhism. Report an error

36:35 And now they're in a in position a position to to return. return the favor and to bring it back into India and then from India. So that history is quite interesting. Quite interesting that that transplantation had taken place just before it was destroyed in its home country. Report an error

36:58 Anything else? Could Report an error

37:05 you talk briefly about as far as the migration of the... The overall scope of Buddhism over to the West, just a couple of pivotal historical moments in which what triggered finally the ushering of the, what would you call it, migration of the Dharma over to the West. Report an error

37:29 I don't think you're allowed to ask questions. I think you only pass on the microphone. I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Report an error

37:40 That's a hard one to summarize. And in fact, only recently I came across some books that I was not aware of when either they hadn't been published or I just didn't see them when I was writing this book that kind of addressed that point. There are a few now that you can research and get a better idea which really focus on the coming to the West of Buddhism, not just the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia and so forth, but specifically the part of how it reached... Report an error

38:16 So I'm not really up on all of that, though you can research it. But I think one of the, there's a few elements that can be pointed out. One had to do with the British presence in India, right? Because the British ruled India for several centuries, the Raj, right? All those things you see on, you know, PBS. Report an error

38:47 So all of that. And one of the results of it was that there were people like, especially this one person, Cunningham, who did quite a lot of archaeological work and discovered, for example, they discovered the stupa, the monument, that had been built centuries and centuries previously. Report an error

39:15 Next to the original Bodhi tree, the tree of enlightenment. And even the people who lived in that neighborhood, where that stupa still stood, didn't know what it was. It had fallen in such disuse that they didn't recognize what it was. It was partially buried through the Cretans. I think if you had gone there in those days, the ground floor where you would have been would actually have been the second or the third floor. Report an error

39:42 Everything else was buried. These are not some forgotten Hindu shrines, but these actually are very, very early Buddhist shrines. And those kinds of discoveries had tremendous impact on people because... Report an error

40:16 As time passes, a lot of the spiritual geniuses of the world become more mythological figures than real figures. Report an error

40:26 A lot of people feel that same way about Jesus. They'll say, OK, there was somebody named Jesus who lived once. But because there's relatively few facts about his life that everyone agrees upon, then the Jesus that people relate to becomes a kind of a mythical larger-than-life. And then eventually grows up the idea of well maybe there wasn't even a Jesus to begin with. Maybe it was just an invention. And that has been said about all the great spiritual teachers of antiquity. Report an error

41:01 Who were they? Did they ever exist? Or was it kind of like a pious fairy tale that grew up? And something similar to that happened about Buddha and Buddhism. Report an error

41:12 Did it have a historical basis? Was there actually ever a Bodhi tree? Was there ever someone who sat under it and attained enlightenment? Those kinds of things. Those were questions in the West. In the East, there were still people who practiced Buddhism or worshipped Buddha, we could say, who believed in his reality. Report an error

41:31 But then when the Westerners studied those forms of Buddhism, all they saw was the mythological overlay. So they questioned whether there was anything solid underneath. So those kinds of archaeological discoveries were very important for tapping interest. Another gift from the British Raj was a book written by I always forget whether his name is Edward Arnold or Edwin Arnold. Report an error

42:03 The Arnold I'm pretty sure about. So Sir Arnold, I'll call him. And he wrote a poem called The Light of Asia. And it was kind of like the Harry Potter of its day. I mean, it just flew off bookshelves. It was extremely popular. He wrote it towards the end of the 1800s. And it was about the same time that books like Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which was also a big bestseller in the Victorian days, were coming out. Report an error

42:36 So there was kind of a great interest in England and by extension in other Western... And Arnold wrote this extraordinary poem. Actually, I love it. I've read it myself a few times. It's written in a kind of a Victorian style, a little bit ornate. But what it is, is that he himself studied the ancient Sanskrit texts of the life of Buddha and then he put it into poetry. Report an error

43:07 And that also roused a huge amount of interest. Just the publication of The Light of Asia. So that was a big event. And another was a convocation of Orientalists. It was a congress that was held in Chicago, I believe. I can look up the date. I don't quite remember. Also in the 1800s. And at that, there were masters from a number of different traditions who came together. Report an error

43:40 There were great Swamis from Hindu traditions and masters from Buddhist traditions and others as well. And so that kind of event also piqued people's interest. Report an error

43:55 Parliament of World Religions. Exactly, that's what it's called. Thank you. There were some really quite amazing people who the West hadn't really heard of up until that time. So it was kind of like a World's Fair kind of event. So those were some things. There were the translations done by Mueller, a German philologist, who translated some very, very important texts, including the work on which Edwin Arnold had based his poem, The Light of Asia, an ancient account of the life of Buddha, for example, and other teachings. Report an error

44:35 So there was different pockets of interest. In American history we have Emerson and Thoreau, the so-called transcendentalists, and they were greatly influenced by certain German philosophers who had steeped themselves in what was available in Hinduism and Buddhism. It wasn't much, but they had studied that and it had seeped into the American psyche through people like Emerson particularly and Thoreau. Report an error

45:09 kind of the... Brahmins of New England. So in all these different ways, different threads of Buddhist thought, sometimes separate, sometimes mixed with the Hindu context out of which it grew, seeped its way into kind of Western psyche. And then, after that, then you can talk about things like, oh, you know, historical events like the building of the railroads. Report an error

45:36 You know, the huge endeavor to connect the whole... And probably... that. Suddenly there was whole body of people who were practicing a spiritual path which was up to that point quite unknown in the West. once that happens, of course, interest grows. And probably... In our lifetime, the single most important factor, I think, but here I'm speaking kind of chauvinistically so I could be wrong, is the fact that in 1959 His Holiness the Dalai Lama and about 100,000 Tibetans fled Tibet for India. Report an error

46:27 And when His Holiness the Dalai Lama became a player on the world stage, which took a while to happen, when that happened then it drew a lot of people's interest. Because here was someone who wasn't just a Buddhist teacher or a Buddhist scholar or a Buddhist, but was actually a Buddha. He would never say that, but someone who's actually evolved, a spiritually evolved being. And people can recognize that no matter what tradition they come from. Report an error

46:56 You don't have to be a Buddhist to recognize that the Dalai Lama has evolved something and that what he has become has not made him less human. It's actually made him more human. So it's much more easy to relate to than a dusty Buddhist statue or a painting or something like that. To see that it actually brings about a beneficial effect, not only in His Holiness but in so many of the other great teachers who are now in the West, that had a very big impact, I think. Report an error

47:31 So that's just a few of the things. But I'm sure I've skipped over many, many, many other... Key points in the evolution. But as I said, there are now a number of books which really delve into this process in more depth. One of those books has been out for a while. I think When the Swans Came to the Lake is one book. Report an error

47:56 And the other one, this newer title that I saw, I don't remember the title, but of course you can always Google it. Just put in a few keywords and you'll find out what it is. I don't remember the title. Report an error

48:12 Yes, please. Just sort of in a similar vein, are you aware of any books or forgive me because I'm not sure of the content of your book. Are there books that tackle the sort of spiritual development of the Buddha before he began teaching, before he attained enlightenment and he received spiritual teachings and I assume they were primarily Hinduism. Report an error

48:41 Dharma, karma, I think those concepts were sort of around. Are there books that, or does your book elaborate at all on the Buddha's sort of spiritual education? Report an error

48:54 I don't remember if I mentioned that in more than a sentence, but I know a little bit about that. I don't know a great deal, but I know a little bit about that. Report an error

49:10 So I'll just pass on what I do know. What I have read and studied, the Report an error

49:27 figure that we now refer to as the Buddha or Shakyamuni Buddha or Gautama Buddha, all the different names by which he's known, was born a prince. His father was King Shudodana and his kingdom was what's now the Nepal-Indian border. Report an error

49:50 His clan was the Shakya clan and he was the ruler. Now we give him the title or historians give him the title of king. Very likely he may have been just a tribal chief but he was the ruler of that group. And pardon me, his son, the prince, was Siddhartha who eventually became the Buddha. And for the first 29 years of his life he followed the royal life living in... Report an error

50:22 Very opulent surroundings. I like to think of it as what the Nepali Indian version of the lifestyle of the rich and famous would have been 2,500 years ago. But in his 29th year, he received, it's often described as visions of sickness, old age and death. In other words, all the suffering of the world that his father had tried to shield him from by... Report an error

50:52 By giving him the lifestyle of the rich and famous, all of that kind of fell away and for the first time he really encountered the misery that people experience in their life and it brought up, it induced in him a desire to find a way out of that suffering, not only for himself but for others. That kind of thought became his kind of paramount motivation. Report an error

51:23 Actually, there's something both unlikely and very likely about that story that for 29 years he could have been so sheltered from suffering that it came as such a shock to him when he finally saw it. I mean, on one hand you think, well, how did they manage to do that? How did they manage to keep him so ignorant of just the everyday suffering of life? Report an error

51:46 But, you know, there's, I think... There's really similarities to that even in our culture. It's like, at least when I was growing up, death was not something you talked about. You kind of whispered about it in the other room, not in front of the children. And there was countries like, I was told in certain parts of Germany, funeral processions took place at night so as not to freak out the populace during the daytime. Report an error

52:17 And there were books like The Denial of Death. That were very popular. It's kind of like systematic denial or blinding oneself to certain uncomfortable realities about existence. Kind of living in this kind of artificial cocoon, as it were. So anyway, Siddhartha experienced that kind of cocoon-like existence until the fabric of that cocoon was broken in his 29th year when he came face to face with the... Report an error

52:49 And it said that on those occasions he actually received four visions. The first three were of suffering, sickness, old age and death. But the fourth vision was of someone who had renounced the worldly life, had given up being a householder and was searching for, in the same way that Prince Siddhartha was interested in, was searching for an end to suffering. Report an error

53:20 And so seeing this person, that's what motivated him, that that's what he had to do. He had to leave the royal life, which he now saw as a prison. You no longer saw it as a pleasure palace or an opulent paradise. He saw it as a prison. And so he left. And he Report an error

53:44 went, and this is where the only answer to the question that was asked comes in. Because he went and he studied. I'll call them meditation masters. We have their names. Report an error

54:03 Something like Arata and Adraka. Their names have come down to us. He studied with these two. It's quite interesting because he mastered what they taught him. In fact, the teachers designated him their Dharma heir. In other words, he was such a... A good student, he learned it from the inside. He really learned what they had to teach, not just intellectually, that they wanted him to be not only their main disciple but their heir. Report an error

54:39 But he found, and of course they must have been teaching from what we could generally call the Hindu tradition, but that's a very tricky word to use because that... The five-letter word Hindu covers a huge, vast array of spiritual practices, from the very ritualistic Vedic practices to all types of contemplative practices. Report an error

55:10 But it appears that what he studied with them was ways of concentrating the mind, ways of gaining single-pointed concentration. Because through gaining single-pointed concentration, it's possible... to elevate your mind to a place where it leaves the ordinary worldly sphere. It achieves these deep states of meditative absorption. Report an error

55:36 And Siddhartha felt that these teachings were very, very valuable but they didn't actually lead to liberation. Report an error

55:48 I'm putting words in his mouth now but it was as if it was like it led to a vacation from suffering but not liberation from suffering. In other words, as long as you were in this deeply meditative state, then you were out of suffering. But when you rose from it, then you hadn't eradicated the cause, the actual cause of suffering itself. Report an error

56:12 And so it didn't lead in and of itself to liberation, though it was a very important tool in the path to liberation. It itself didn't lead there. So he gave up after mastering those teachings. He gave them up and decided he would follow a different path. And the path that was available to him at that time was the path of asceticism. Report an error

56:35 There were many people, and actually even when I was growing up in the 50s and so forth, there was always this image of the Indian fakir, you know, someone who sits on a bed of nails or stands outside looking up in the sky at the sun or this kind of, you know. Kind of an exaggerated vision of Indian yogis like that. But that's image. Report an error

57:05 I'm just talking about that image coming into mind. But there was ascetic practices that were taking place. And of course that wasn't just in India itself. A lot of the early desert fathers of Christianity were ascetic practitioners. And one feature... Not the sole feature, but one feature of ascetic practice is the idea that the path that leads to the liberation from suffering has to do with willpower. Report an error

57:36 If you could just get past being hungry when you're hungry and exposed to the weather when you're exposed to the weather, if you get over those difficulties, then somehow you could kind of break through to the other side through strict asceticism. So that's what he did for six years. He followed these very, very strict ascetic practices. So at that time, he didn't really, as far as I understand, he didn't really have a teacher. Report an error

58:05 He just had this method that was practiced in common by a number of people. In fact, he joined a group of five similar ascetics in this forest who were all practicing the same way. So, for instance, they didn't live indoors at all. Whatever the weather was, they lived outside. They didn't wear proper clothing, just a few robes. They didn't eat proper food. It was said that after a while, the only thing that Siddhartha ate was the berries and seeds that happened to fall on his lap as he was sitting in the forest. Report an error

58:42 And so the other ascetics were practicing with him. They took him as their leader because his practice of asceticism was even that much... And they figured if anyone's going to break through to the other side, it's going to be Siddhartha. So they attached themselves to him. So during that period of time, they don't talk of him having a teacher. Report an error

59:05 He must have just known what ascetic practices were and then just dove into it for six years. And the Tibetans refer to this as the six-year fast. And at the end of those six years, he was basically reduced to a living skeleton. And he was so weakened that when he went to bathe himself in the river, he almost drowned. And then there's a very, very nice story. It's one of those stories which I don't care whether it's true or not. Report an error

59:30 It's true because it's so beautiful. The story goes that he just almost drowned in this river and he was lying on the banks, you know, kind of recovering. And as he was lying there, a band of itinerant musicians were passing by. And if you go to India now, that happens, especially in certain seasons, the wedding season. You'll see groups of three or four or five musicians passing through the fields on the way from playing at one wedding and then going to play at another wedding. Report an error

1:00:03 So that happens all the time. So as he's lying there, a group of these wandering musicians pass by and they were singing a song and the gist of it was a... Report an error

1:00:19 An admonition to the lute player or the sitar player on how to tune the instrument. Don't tune it too tightly and don't tune it too slackly, but tune it just right so the melody will be beautiful. That was kind of the gist, the theme of that song. And that's what Siddhartha heard. And he immediately applied it to himself. He said, okay, for 26 years I have been tuning myself too slackly. Report an error

1:00:57 six years, I was tuning my strings much too tightly, know, with these strict ascetic practices. If I'm ever going to follow a path that leads to liberation from suffering, I'm going to have to follow a middle path, avoiding the extremes of self-indulgence on one hand self-denial or asceticism on And that's interesting because that phrase, following a middle path, that actually became the name for Buddhist teachings, was the middle path. Report an error

1:01:29 In his lifetime, and I think probably for a long time afterwards, no one ever said that he's teaching Buddhism. I think that term or the equivalent, the Asian equivalent of those terms, probably didn't come into existence until quite a bit later. Instead, what he was teaching was the middle way, the middle path. And it was a middle path on many different levels. Report an error

1:01:55 First on this basic level of behavior, you know, all things in moderation, not excessive indulgence, not excessive denial, that kind of middle path. But later, the middle path took on much deeper philosophical meanings. Report an error

1:02:13 meanings. Report an error

1:02:17 connotations because it was a middle path between extreme philosophical views about the nature of existence. And then the story goes on to say that at that time that he decided to accept nourishing food for the first time and it so happened there was a... young woman who'd come into the forest where he was with an offering. She wanted to give it to the tree spirits, the gods that lived in that forest for helping her in childbirth. Report an error

1:02:55 And when she saw this extraordinary figure sitting there, she thought, oh, this is the tree spirit himself. This must be the king of the tree spirits. So she offered this Thanksgiving offer. She offered it to him, thinking that he was this unusual being. you know unusual being and it said that this this This offering did kind of two things. One, it re-nourished Siddhartha. You know, it kind of, the glory and the luster that he had lost in those six years came back through this offering, or we started to come back through this offering. Report an error

1:03:32 And the other thing it did was it really pissed off the other five ascetics. Because they looked and they said, oh, he's given up. Look, he talks to women, that's not... And then from a woman he accepts all this nourishing food. So clearly he's given up. He's given up his asceticism. And they left. They left. They said we'll continue without him. We'll go to the deer park in Sarnath. That's another good place for ascetic practitioners. So they left where they were and they headed to Sarnath, which at that time, even in Buddha's time, was an ancient religious center. Report an error

1:04:09 And then Siddhartha... He continued his practices alone. He crossed the river, took his seat under what became known as the Tree of Enlightenment in modern-day Bodh Gaya, and then in meditation practices which took him deeper and deeper and deeper, he discerned what the mechanism was that keep people bound in suffering and where that link, where that mechanism can be broken. Report an error

1:04:37 And I think many of you have heard about teachings on the 12 links of dependent arising. This was the major insight that he received. And it is said that the next morning when he arose from that meditation, he was no longer Prince Siddhartha. He was a Buddha. He was an awakened being. And then when he thought, who is he going to share the insights with that he had gained? Report an error

1:05:05 Well, let Let me back up for a second. It said the way the story goes is that for seven weeks it didn't occur to him to teach what he had experienced to anyone else because he was experiencing a bliss, a type of existence which was kind of virtually beyond communication. And so he just spent seven weeks just enjoying that kind of experience, that kind of extraordinary experience. Report an error

1:05:36 Here, again, the story becomes quite mythological in nature, but I love this part. It said that the kings of heaven, meaning Indra and Brahman, they're the ones who kind of rule the heaven and earth in that Hindu cosmology. So on behalf of all of their subjects, in other words, on behalf of the whole world, they appealed to the Buddha. They said, please, please share with others. Report an error

1:06:04 The insights that you've gained so that our subjects can achieve liberation as well. And then Buddha immediately agreed. And this part of the story is said to have tremendous meaning. That in the Buddhist tradition, it's not considered kosher to teach without being asked for the teachings. And this isn't just a kind of a quaint... Report an error

1:06:35 Oriental custom. It actually has great meaning because it's only when a person decides that there's something insufficient about his or her life and goes looking for a direction to follow that the directions that are given to that person is going to mean something. Standing on the corner and shouting the truth to people who are passing by who aren't interested, that does no one any good. So that turning of the mind towards the teachings, Report an error

1:07:05 As said here, requesting the teachings is considered a major ingredient in the Buddhist path. It already shows that the consciousness is starting to turn around somehow. Report an error

1:07:21 It's like the flower turning itself to the sun to receive its rays. So this question or this request by Indra and Brahman on behalf of all creation is said to be the request. that, in a sense, allowed Buddha to give his teachings. It's often said that the reason that Buddha hesitated giving teachings was that it took him such a tremendously long period of time, not just in that lifetime. Report an error

1:07:51 But in previous lifetimes, to reach the point that he could achieve enlightenment, that he figured it was too difficult a path for anyone else to follow, especially since their minds were so covered with delusion. And then Indra and Brahman said, yes, but the minds of some beings, the dust that covers them is not that thick. So there'll be some people who'll benefit. Report an error

1:08:12 Yes, the people's minds are covered, but for some, the covering is thinner than others, so they'll benefit. And that also became kind of a phrase that was passed down in the Buddhist teachings of the covered mind. So then it's said that Buddha then decided, well, who would be the appropriate people to receive the first teachings? Report an error

1:08:40 And his mind immediately went to his two previous teachers, the ones that I mentioned who taught him this meditative concentration. concentration but He realized that they had already passed away, so they weren't available. And then after that, his mind turned towards the five ascetic companions of his, because he had just spent six years with them. Report an error

1:09:05 He knew that they were very intent, that they were very, very serious, and that they were really interested in liberation. And he knew where they were. He knew they had gone to the deer park. So that's where he went. And there's a lovely part of the story that... When they saw him coming from a distance, they said, oh, there's that quitter again, we're not going to have anything to do with him. And they kind of decided that they weren't going to greet him, they weren't going to be friendly with him at all. Report an error

1:09:36 But as he approached closer and closer, it became immediately obvious to all five of them that something had happened to Siddhartha, that he wasn't Siddhartha anymore. Report an error

1:09:46 He didn't have to say anything, just by the way he carried himself. And so despite the fact that they had made a determination not to welcome him, they did welcome him. They prepared a seat for him and did all of the proper ceremonies for welcoming a teacher. And then they asked him. And it was at that teaching, it was at that occasion that he gave his first discourse or sūtra. Report an error

1:10:14 Does anyone know the name of that sūtra? Report an error

1:10:24 It's called the Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. The Sūtra of the Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. And just as the double triangle is a symbolism of Judaism and the cross is a symbol of Christianity and so forth, the wheel, the six-spoke wheel, is a symbol of Buddhism. Because in that teaching, he taught that there is a path leading away from suffering. It has to do with overcoming the causes of suffering, to achieve a cessation of suffering. Report an error

1:10:53 And the path that leads to that is the so-called eightfold path. So Buddhism then, the symbol of it, became a wheel with eight spokes. And turning the wheel became like a poetic phrase for setting the teachings in motion. So on that occasion of that very first teaching, he set into motion the wheel of Dharma, the wheel of teachings. Report an error

1:11:17 And then he taught and continues to turn the wheel on many more occasions for the remaining... Well, in Tibetan tradition, they identify the space of time as for the remaining 45 years. There's other traditions which label it 50. But in Tibetan tradition, they say that he manifested enlightenment when he was 35 and he passed away when he was 80. Report an error

1:11:39 So there was 45 years of teaching. And so as far as I know, as far as I'm aware... Other than rituals that he may have learned around the court of where he was brought up, like Vedic rituals, bathing rituals and things like that, as far as actual spiritual teachings were concerned, they seem to only identify those two meditation masters. Report an error

1:12:08 He would have undoubtedly been exposed to different so-called pujas, offering ceremonies that came from the Vedic traditions. That must have... But there's no talk about him actually receiving spiritual training from any of those. He was not, by the way, in the Brahmin caste. He wasn't in the priestly class. He was in the warrior or the ruling caste. So he was not receiving those teachings anyway. But certainly there's no mention of his particular study, though he would have seen those ritualistic behaviors. Report an error

1:12:45 The only study that was mentioned is what he did with those two teachers. It would be interesting, though, if there was something else that he was exposed to, but I've not come across anything. Vikrant, did you? Who Report an error

1:13:04 coined the word Buddhism? Buddhism? Which English person coined that word? I don't know. Could it be one of the two people you've mentioned? Because in India, you know, like, they don't make a difference. There's no differentiation. There's very little differentiation between what happens in India. So in India, they don't say, okay, this is a different religion. They're doing something totally differently. Report an error

1:13:26 To them, there are differences, but they look at them as very minute. So what are the minute differences then? Because in a sense, if one says there are two different religions, then there have to be differences within the religions. But then if, from what I know, what I've tried to study in the last four or five years, the more I look into it, the less differences I find. Report an error

1:13:54 Yeah, that's definitely possible. I think... The phrase that I was introduced to, by the way, who coined the term Buddhism? I don't know. I have no idea. Or even what language it first appeared, because that's English, but in German it could be Buddhism or something. I don't know what it is. But the phrase that I was always exposed to earlier on was Buddha Dharma. Report an error

1:14:22 Dharma is just a general... Well, it actually has many meanings, but here it means spiritual teachings or spiritual insight. So the spiritual insight taught or revealed by the Buddha is then the Buddha Dharma. That, you know, revealed by Jesus is the Jesus Dharma. There's, you know, Vishnu Dharma, the Hindu Dharma. In other words, there's all these different dharmas. Report an error

1:14:45 The dharma, the truth, the way, which has a sense of being one and unified, but as revealed by different spiritual masters. Report an error

1:14:54 So there's a whole literature of the teachings that specifically come from Buddha. These are things he actually uttered, things that he said, things that he taught. And then in a whole additional literature of those people who followed in that tradition and then wrote commentaries, shastras to these original teachings. Report an error

1:15:15 So the Buddha Dharma then became a term that applied specifically not only to those texts. But to the living tradition that passed on the insights that those texts were meant to convey. And so that then became the Buddha Dharma or Buddhism. Report an error

1:15:38 I have a couple of questions about when the Buddha became enlightened. One is... And there are different versions of that story. Yeah. There are definitely different versions. And I'm not remembering them well, but... One is with the snakes. Do you know who the snakes are? And also the other one is that he touched the earth because the earth was his witness. Report an error

1:16:05 Could you elaborate on either of those? Okay. Report an error

1:16:13 You don't ask simple questions for dummies. Report an error

1:16:22 I have a tendency... You're high-level dummies, right? Right. You didn't fail the entrance exam too much. You almost passed. Report an error

1:16:38 I have a tendency to give long rambling answers to even simple questions, but these questions are complex questions, so then even more rambling. Report an error

1:16:50 The Report an error

1:16:59 story of the snake, I seem to remember the name Muchalinda, but I'm not sure if that's accurate or not. Anyway, the story is that the Buddha was sitting in meditation and a storm broke out. And this giant snake came and spread its hood. I guess it must have been like a cobra, right? A cobra has its hood. He spread its hood over the Buddha like a protective, like an umbrella, like that. Report an error

1:17:36 And if you go to Bodh Gaya now, there is a tank or a pool very, very close to the Bodhi tree. It's quite a lovely little area and then right in the middle of it they have a statue of the Buddha sitting in meditation with a snake sheltering him like that. And not terribly long ago I heard a story of a someone, a young meditator in India and people found him sitting in meditation and something similar had happened. Report an error

1:18:14 Nepal? Nepal or India? Yeah. And the same thing with this protective, you know, this snake had come and protected it like that. So either both stories are made up or both are true or one is true and one I don't know. But that is the story, the story that he, actually throughout Buddha's life, even before he attained full enlightenment, there were stories about the special affinity he had with animals. Report an error

1:18:44 Many, many stories throughout his life of... There was always this strong connection. In fact, there are many people in India who may not consider themselves Buddhists, but they revere Buddha as someone who taught kindness to animals. Of all of his teachings, that's the one that many people focus on as being... Report an error

1:19:17 specific importance to get beyond animal sacrifice and being kind to animals like that. Many people take that as his prime teachings. I don't think you get that impression from Western Buddhists. If you ask, you know, what's the most important teachings of the Buddha, kindness to animals would not be way up on the top. Report an error

1:19:36 But in India, for many people, not all, but for many people, that's kind of what Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Report an error

1:19:49 So it's kind of an interesting thing. So that's the only story, and I don't know very much about it other than receiving protection from this snake, this evidently a king cobra. The other had to do with the evolution of the earth-touching posture. Is he in that posture? Because I can't see. When I was younger I could turn around. Report an error

1:20:20 It's harder and harder as the years go by. Report an error

1:20:26 So this particular gesture, the earth-touching gesture, or calling the earth as a witness, as you expressed it, this represents an event that happened after... Prince Siddhartha sat down in meditation under the Bodhi tree and before he attained enlightenment, between those two events, between sitting down and actually attaining enlightenment, there was the defeat of Māra. Report an error

1:21:04 that's what this symbolizes, the defeat of Māra. Now, Māra is understood on many different levels. Basically, Māra is everything... So the essential Māra is our ignorance, greed. Report an error

1:21:21 hatred, jealousy, the so-called delusions or defilements or if you like to answer it, the klesha, the things that blanket the pure nature of our mind and are productive of suffering. That's the essential Māra. It's said that if you overcome those inner Maras, those inner demonic forces, then no external Māra can harm you. Report an error

1:21:43 But in addition to those internal Maras, there are external Maras. There are external interferences. So, for instance, one of those takes the form of the forces that disturb a meditator. And it's often said that a sign of a really good meditator or a real serious meditator is how many maras he or she attracts. Report an error

1:22:05 You know, things go wrong, you know, and you hear many, many stories of people heading out to do a retreat and the car won't start and, you know, it's just one after another like that. So all these kind of... forces inimicable to the practice of meditation. Report an error

1:22:26 Lama Yeshe used to say, big dharma attracts big saṃsāra. Like that. Anyway, so the story goes that as he sat under the bodhi tree, that Māra as a personification of these Report an error

1:22:55 Demonic impulses, we could say, these mental disturbances, the actual spiritual force which kind of acts as the conveyor or the vehicle for these interferences, that Māra appeared to Buddha in many, many different guises, all intent on shaking his resolve and interfering with his ability. to attain enlightenment and and the way it's often described poetically in the biographies was that Māra didn't come alone he came with his whole entourage all his sons and daughters and he said do you realize that if siddhartha is successful if he achieves enlightenment then we're doomed you know our our kingdom is under attack by this guy you know right So we better, you know. Report an error

1:23:46 We better attack him, you know, kind of like preemptive attack. Before he attacks us, we'll attack him, you know. And so that night there was all these attacks by Māra. And anyone who does even a little bit of meditation kind of knows, gets a flavor what these attacks are like. You know, sometimes the attack is very kind of vicious. You know, where like you're coming down with fevers and chills and, you know, these... Report an error

1:24:16 Lama Tsongkhapa Dick Van Dyke, every Mary Tyler Moore, all the TV programs that I liked as a kid, they ran through my mind. I don't think I left out anything. And I wasn't there to watch television, but that's what was coming up in the mind, almost anything except meditate. So it's said in the Buddha story that he was attacked by Māra, but his... Report an error

1:25:15 What saved him was his loving motivation, that he was so intent on achieving enlightenment to help others that he was protected by an aura of his own love. And so graphically this is expressed very, very tellingly in many, many different art forms that as these demonic figures were throwing these weapons at him that as they approached they turned into... Report an error

1:25:44 Flower petals that fell harmlessly at his feet like that. And in fact, in that movie, The Little Buddha, that particular scene is shown rather dramatically. You know, the attack of Māra and how the weapons turned to petals. So none of the approaches that Māra tried worked. You know, whether it was this kind of vicious attack didn't work, seducing his mind. Report an error

1:26:12 With images of luxury and so on. That didn't work. So finally, kind of the final attack was to instill a sense that he wasn't worthy to achieve enlightenment. So the way the story is often told is at that point Māra dismissed all his legions. You know, his whole army of sons and daughters. He dismissed them all. Report an error

1:26:33 And then he just appeared to Siddhartha one on one. And in a very, very mocking tone, he said, okay. Here you are, Prince Siddhartha, sitting here. You think you're going to attain enlightenment. And what have you done so far? Well, you wasted the first 29 years of your life just pampering yourself. Then you wasted the next six years of your life starving yourself. And now you think you're going to sit under this tree and gain enlightenment? So show me one witness that you're worthy of succeeding where everybody else has failed. Report an error

1:27:06 So that kind of mocking tone. And I find that really... Easy to relate to that, you know, because sometimes our spiritual practice is such that we kind of have an enthusiasm and we think, yeah, just try hard, we can do something. But sometimes we think, oh, you know, look, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm never going to get any better. You know, what have I done to deserve this? Report an error

1:27:31 You know, this kind of feeling of self-doubt comes in. And that's what Māra, these Maric forces were embodying, this mocking self-doubt. And so it's said that the way that Siddhartha, and I'm calling him Siddhartha here specifically because this is prior to his attainment of enlightenment, according to this version of the story. Report an error

1:27:52 So the way he answered those taunts was not verbally, but by, his hands had been in his lap in meditation, but by stretching out his right hand and touching the ground. Beyond his right knee, he was actually calling on the earth as his witness, meaning that he hadn't started the spiritual path just 35 years ago. Report an error

1:28:20 He had actually been on the spiritual path for a lifetime after a lifetime after a lifetime, sometimes as an animal, sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a man, all these different life forms that he had taken. During which he was practicing such things as morality and generosity and patience and perseverance and meditation and wisdom and so forth. Report an error

1:28:41 All the various practices of a bodhisattva. And so that he had actually, the way the Tibetan Buddhists would phrase it, that he had accumulated the collections of merit and wisdom. Report an error

1:28:58 It's through the accumulation of these two. Sets of spiritual qualities, merit based on deeds done with compassion and wisdom based on insight, that he had accumulated these stores sufficiently so that he was actually prepared for enlightenment. And the earth was his witness. And in some versions of the story, it is even said that the earth shook or it split open and an earth goddess appeared. Report an error

1:29:29 Actually served as a witness. Other versions of the story is just simply the gesture itself was enough. But after that, after that earth touching gesture, then Māra was no more. In other words, his mind at that point was completely beyond the attack of Māra. So one imagines that he then put his hand back in his lap and then continued to meditate and it was in those subsequent states of meditative absorption. Report an error

1:29:58 That he gained insight, for example, into the 12 links of dependent arising and he saw how desire born from ignorance is the linchpin to this and all the various insights that had to do with overcoming that and then the next morning achieved enlightenment. So that's the genesis of the earth touching mudrā. Mudrā just means gesture. Hello? Report an error

1:30:28 I'm I'm actually new to this, but I'm going to go on a pilgrimage. I'm going to go with Rubina to Nepal and India. So if you could give me some hints for a dummy, because I think that term applies to how to approach it and to learn. I would appreciate that. I also heard just before I came here that someone is Report an error

1:31:00 going to Kailash next week. I don't think that's on Rabina's schedule, is it Kailash? I think that's a bit too extreme. So I'm guessing on Rabina's would be places like Lumbini and Sarnath and Bodh Gaya and Kushinagar and those places. Report an error

1:31:29 So I don't think your question is what places to go. I don't think that's the question, is it? It's more how to gain... the most benefit from, you know. Report an error

1:31:43 That's a very, very good question. Report an error

1:31:52 Well, I always felt that it was very, very powerful to know the Buddha's story sufficiently well so that when we visited those sites, we could place that within his biography. And not simply, you know, well, kind of on two levels. Report an error

1:32:16 One level which I found much more touching than I would have imagined beforehand was the connection it makes between me in the present day and something that happened such a long time ago. Report an error

1:32:31 When I visited Bodh Gaya for the first time, I was amazed how I felt while I was there, how I felt Buddha's presence. In fact, at the time, the image that came to my mind was that Buddha had struck this place like you'd strike a gong. And my visual image of it was the stupa itself, this large central stupa. Of course, the stupa wasn't there while he was there, but it was kind of like a symbol of it, that he had struck the stupa and it was still ringing with that vibration. Report an error

1:33:10 And if someone had told me that before I had gone... I would have just dismissed it. My mind doesn't kind of work in those kind of devotional ways. But when I was at those places, I really felt that. I really felt that connection, that those intervening centuries had melted away. And so Buddha became a very living figure, not a historical figure as someone who had said something a long time ago, but a real present force. Report an error

1:33:38 It really felt that way. And the strongest I felt it... Report an error

1:33:47 So the strongest I felt it was in Bodh Gaya, but one can feel it in many of these places, especially places that Buddha or other great saints like Milarepa, who I mentioned before, or Guru Rinpoche, because if you go to Nepal, you'll see many, many places sacred to Milarepa and Guru Rinpoche, who were second Buddhas, definitely. Report an error

1:34:10 And so to realize that they're not just fairy tales, not just names in books, but real... Living, breathing beings whose influence is still present, still palpably present. That had a great meaning for me, you know, in just bringing things alive. And so that was kind of one half of it. The other half was that it wasn't just simply a trip into history. It was also that, well... Report an error

1:34:40 These people walked on the same earth and did these same things and achieved these accomplishments. So it must have relevance to what I'm trying to do now, you know, as an inspiration. Not just out of, you know, it increases kind of the worshipful aspect for the teachers, but it also increases the kind of the inspirational aspect for oneself to be in those same places. Report an error

1:35:04 So, for example, just to give one example, one of the things that we did. when we went on our own pilgrimages not far from budgaya is the ruins of nalanda that i was talking about before this great tradition the the the seed of as the dalai lama says nalanda buddhism you know the nalanda tradition right and you can visit these extensive ruins and not far away Report an error

1:35:30 and a half something like that easy to get to Thank Lama Tsongkhapa And was going to continue to study over the next many years a text by the great Indian master Shantideva. And I think a lot of you have heard his name because I would say that the book he wrote, The Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, is probably the most taught text in Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error

1:35:59 He was a great Indian master and his teachings infused the Tibetan tradition through such people as Atisha's teacher in... Sumatra and so forth. And so while we were at Nalanda, we sat together and we read out loud the last chapter, the dedication chapter of Shantideva. So we had something with us that really attached us to this place. Now Nalanda was such a place that we could have chosen many things. Like the great master Naropa was there and there's many, many teachings from Naropa and so forth. Report an error

1:36:35 But But the the one one that that we chose was the one that meant. Much to us was Shantideva's text. And then when we were in Rajgir, which is also just down the road from Nalanda, very, very close by. Report an error

1:36:49 I'm not sure whether you could walk it, but it's really, really close. It's really close. Rajgir is the site of many things sacred to the life of Buddha. Baths where he bathed himself and hot springs where he bathed himself and so forth. But the jewel of it... Report an error

1:37:09 behind it and you can climb up and you can go right to the area where he delivered the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras including the Heart Sūtra right there so to sit on Vulture's Peak with a copy of the Heart Sūtra right there it's amazing Report an error

1:37:25 then a little bit further up the hill is where I believe if I'm not mistaken he delivered the Lotus Sūtra so in Far Eastern Buddhism the Lotus Sūtra occupies an incredibly incredibly high high It's a special place. It's a little bit harder to read. The Heart Sūtra is only one page. The Lotus Sūtra is like an encyclopedia. But having something like that at that place would be a way. Report an error

1:37:50 So in other words, anything that connects you with what's on in those places, that brings out the quality. A biography, people who have visited in the past, all those kinds of things are helpful. Report an error

1:38:07 The year before I came, my friend who I joined had gone on a mini pilgrimage with his teacher. And he said that he followed his teachers kind of like the way ducklings follow their mother. So he just did everything the teacher did. And he said he circumambulated everything. Sometimes you go to these places and there'll be like an explosion of stupas spread out over a football field. Report an error

1:38:39 So he just circumambulated every one of them. It's like that. So in other words, doing not so much that action in particular, but any kind of devotional action that strengthens your connection, just taking advantage of that time. And one last thing, because I think there's other pieces of information that you can get from other people as well. Report an error

1:39:10 Lama Yeshe used to have a very special attitude towards Bodh Gaya, in particular where the Bodhi tree is. And he would say, you know, when you go to Bodh Gaya, you don't actually have to meditate. He says being in Bodh Gaya is a meditation. And I think I had a taste of what he meant. He certainly wasn't suggesting we not meditate. Report an error

1:39:33 He wasn't saying that. But I think what he was saying was that if you're just open to the place, place, becomes a meditative experience. And then any practice you do on top of that, whatever that might be, just increases the power of it. So for example, there was, there's this wonderful picture, and Chucky, you'll remind me of the name because I can't remember. I just saw it. It's what Christine Lundberg put So in Mystic Tibet, Lama Zopa together with, I'm guessing, 30 maybe? Report an error

1:40:07 in Mystic Tibet, Report an error

1:40:11 Something like 30 or 40 Western students traveled to all these pilgrimage sites, specifically in Tibet. And he had them doing practices at each one of those, especially things like the prostration to the 35 Buddhas. That's a major devotional practice. And he had them do that at every place that they visited. And a lot of the film is of them doing it while trucks are passing on the road. Report an error

1:40:42 Like that. Many people had never seen people do pilgrimage like that before, especially the Chinese authorities. It was quite an eye-opener for a lot of people to see all these Westerners doing these devotional practices. Report an error

1:40:56 But he would have them recite particularly powerful prayers and so forth in each of these places and also to kind of make very Report an error

1:41:10 sincere prayers or requests. To receive the inspiration from whatever holy beings or whatever energy that place was famous for. And one last thing, just of a personal nature. Report an error

1:41:28 The first meditation course that I took in Nepal from Lama Zopa and Lama Yeshe was in 1973. So by that time I had already been studying in India for a couple of years. And I went over there and then after that... The course was over. I took a copy of the textbook that had been put together. It's called The Wish-Fulfilling Sun. Report an error

1:41:52 And I took it with me to Lambini, which is the birthplace of the Buddha. And I was going to do a work retreat there, kind of editing that. And then from there I was going to India to attend the Kala Chakra initiation, which is a huge initiation of 100,000 people in Bodh Gaya. Report an error

1:42:12 And I remember to get from Kathmandu to Lumbini, you take a plane, but it doesn't take you the whole way. You have to walk the end of it. And because I was, after that I was going to India and I knew there was going to be thousands of people, I didn't think there was 100,000, but I knew there was going to be a lot of people, I knew food was going to be difficult. Report an error

1:42:32 I was carrying all this stuff with me, you know, cans of peanut butter and stuff, you know, to try to stay healthy. And I was carrying all of it and... It was really heavy and I wasn't particularly very strong and I was walking this whole way with this burden on my back. And then partway there I was thinking, well, I'd really like to put down this burden, but I don't want to leave all this food and equipment behind, so I can't. Report an error

1:43:03 I have to take it with me. And then at one point it was like a curtain parted because... I reminded myself, you know, why am I on this road? Why am I carrying this stuff and where am I going? I'm going to Lumbini. Okay, so what's Lumbini? Well, Lumbini is where Buddha was born. So why is that important? Why am I going through all of this to get to that place? Report an error

1:43:32 Also, Lumbini wasn't built up in those days. It may be now, but in those days it wasn't. There was hardly anything there. Even the monastery that was there was only partially built. I ended up staying in this room which was just like a little storeroom. There wasn't anything even slightly approaching luxury or grandeur there. Report an error

1:43:56 But it was the place the Buddha was born. And then I started thinking, well, that's what I'm doing. I'm going to a place where the founder of these teachings that have the power to liberate us from The inception was right there, at that place. That's where he was born. And that thought made every step of the journey a pilgrimage, well before I actually reached Lumbini itself. Report an error

1:44:28 And then the difficulty, carrying the heavy thing and asking people away in a language that I didn't know how to speak and so forth, not knowing if I was really going in the right direction or not. Having no idea how much longer it was going to take. All those difficulties then became, enriched the experience. Instead of being like a hindrance to the experience, it actually made the experience that much more valuable like that. Report an error

1:44:58 So that way of looking at things, that attitude kind of dawned on me as something very helpful. Like just keep in mind why we're there. Why we've gone to these places. What happened there and not... And not just what happened in the sense of the past tense, but what was set in motion there that's still so important. And those kinds of thoughts make the pilgrimage very powerful. Report an error

1:45:25 And I'm very jealous of you. I've not been back. I went to India and Nepal 14 years ago. And before that it was another 10 years. So in 24 years I've just been there for a couple of weeks once. Before that I used to live there. In the 70s and 80s I was there a lot of the time. But after that, only once in 24 years. Now my kids have reached the age where I think I can take them without too much danger of them succumbing to all the things you can succumb to in India. Report an error

1:46:07 Like little kids, you know. Indians love little kids so they're always putting things in their mouth like sweets and stuff like that. Report an error

1:46:18 And that often for Western children doesn't agree with them. So traveling with little kids can be difficult. That's just one reason. But now I think they're kind of older. They can kind of handle it a lot better. So I'm kind of thinking that maybe soon I'll go again. But it's been a long, long time. Because after I first visited Bodh Gaya, it was difficult to spend a winter not in Bodh Gaya. Report an error

1:46:48 Very difficult. If I was in India and it was winter time, my whole body wanted to be in Bodh Gaya. It was really hard not to go. It had this magnetic draw to it. Report an error

1:47:05 Well, we're just about at the end. Anything else? Report an error

1:47:13 Yes, please. Report an error

1:47:16 Jain tradition in... The Jain tradition? Yeah. This saint... Mahavira. Yeah. He lived at the same time. Same time. Same time, same place. Unbelievable. Did they meet once? Do we know something about? Do you know that they met? Report an error

1:47:50 There is one. I'm so clear about that. I'll take Vikrant's word for it that they actually met. It's so unlikely from my looking at it, so unlikely that they wouldn't have met because they lived at the same time in the same place. It's modern day Bihar. In those days I'm sure it was called Magadha or something like that. But it's modern day Bihar, same century, same place, and they're both revered spiritual teachers. Report an error

1:48:24 But I had never come across an actual account that they met, but Vikrant said he read something. But that's, in case you didn't hear, Mahavira is the one who founded Report an error

1:48:43 I'm not sure which is. it's J-I-N, but I've heard it pronounced different ways. it is a spiritual tradition whose, if, hard to sum up an entire tradition, if one had to, then it's as if its major doctrine was non-harming. Report an error

1:49:04 they really go out of their way not to harm. So a Jain will sweep the path in front of him when he walks, not to trample on insects Insects or... or drinking water will put little strainer so that they don't accidentally swallow. It still exists today. It doesn't have nearly as many adherents as, let's say, Orthodox Hinduism does. Report an error

1:49:38 But there are many, I think many Jains have become quite wealthy. Report an error

1:49:53 There are no Brahmin Jains, there are no warrior Jains, they're just business class. So maybe that's the reason, yeah. But it's interesting that these two spiritual giants should be in the same place at the same time. But in China, Confucius and Lao Tzu lived in the same place at the same time. Now they met, there's definitely accounts of them meeting. Report an error

1:50:19 Maybe things like that come in pairs. Report an error

1:50:29 Tomorrow, I think this one, if I understood correctly, this meeting tonight was more the public talk, as it were. And then tomorrow is more the course, the meditation course, such as it will be. And I have a request. I don't know how many people who are attending this evening. Report an error

1:50:56 interested in attending the course tomorrow but I like to make it a both more of a meditative experience and something more tailored to your interests so If there are specific things that you would hope that would be covered in such a course, something you already have in mind that you'd like to practice. Report an error

1:51:25 appreciate it. If you just write a little note before you leave tonight and just leave it on the desk here or out there, that would be very helpful. Or if nothing occurs to you now, if you were to come tomorrow with something like that, I'll definitely look at all of that and take it into account because especially in a situation like we have here, we can sort of tailor things to what... Report an error

1:51:53 What your own interest might be. I think that would be, you know, a lot better for all of us. I mean, I could come up with a topic and just lay it out like that. But I would rather, as I said, tailor it to the interests as much as I can of the people who are actually here. Now, Venerable Chokhi, could you remind me of the time for tomorrow? Report an error

1:52:15 10 Report an error

1:52:21 .30 to 4. Okay. Okay. So that's, yes, the question? No, so anyway, as I said, if you have this question or suggestion of things that would particularly interest you for tomorrow, if you have it in your mind now, then put it on a piece of paper now before you leave. If you have it tomorrow morning, then if you come just a couple of minutes early, I'll take a look at it sometime in the morning before we start. Report an error

1:52:53 And then I'll see you then. So, thank you. Thank you for coming here this evening. And yeah, I hope I see some of you tomorrow. And also I've been very generously invited to give two more talks this autumn. I believe one's at the end of September and the other's at the end of October. I don't remember the exact dates, but... Oh, Report an error

1:53:32 no. I think we have the titles for the other two, don't we? Report an error

1:53:38 well, one course is on death and the process of dying. the other one. forgotten. I don't remember, but it's written somewhere. Someone knows. Report an error

1:53:55 So anyway, if you're interested in any more of these weekends, then they are written Report an error

1:54:19 Sometimes it has a clip on it, you can turn it off. Report an error

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Talk by Jonathan Landaw, recorded 29 August 2008. Original at Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/JL_BuddhismforDummies_20080829. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

Recorded at Tse Chen Ling Center, San Francisco, and archived by the center on Internet Archive. More from Tse Chen Ling

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